IllumiRoom is a proof-of-concept Microsoft Research project designed to push the boundary of living room immersive entertainment by blending our virtual and physical worlds with projected visualizations. The effects in the video are rendered in real time and are captured live -- not special effects added in post processing.

in the leaked xbox720 documents from last spring it was coming from a small sphere that looked like an old skool web cam for a pc, but that of course was only a mock up drawing i suppose since it was next to the mock up xbox720 that lloked like a dvd player lol.

"Yea if it makes it to us exactly the way it looks in the video the ill be very impressed. It looks really good."

Agreed, and you have to remember too that the player will be focused on the screen itself so all of the surrounding images will blend in to the players peripheral vision. Will be pretty mental for any onlookers watching someone play Geometry Wars or something along those lines!

I personally think it's a little distracting and kind of annoying while trying to game to have all that crap going on. I think MS has made another bad decision by going with this tech and instead see the trends going towards tech like the Oculus Rift and Sony's on VR headset.

And it looks like that MS document on 720 that got leaked a few months back was pretty accurate.

ok so lets see if I can help you out here. Take away Santa's little helpers, all the props the furniture and just concentrate on the walls....what do you see? Ooooh! It's exactly the same tech MS is trying to achieve, only better. Do you not see the 3D effects? The higher quality elements being projected onto the walls the richer colors.

@Old McGroin

they stated in the article that this is a proof of concept device only and it made no mention of when it would being ready for the consumer market. So under those parameter yes it's fair to compare the two.

Yeah, Sony's version looks really cool as well, saw that video a while back, but it's not exactly practical considering the amount of work it looks like is going on during the whole thing! I'd imagine by now that Sony have something pretty similar to what MS are currently showing off in the works as well. Exciting times ahead :)

what they r doing is totally different ....where u r seeing a game in action on the xbox side....u r seeing some lightin effect that u can do with any laser lightin out there without any other hardware plugged in...

I don't think Sony would have a problem projecting certain elements of a game onto a wall or combining that with your TV, but why would they when Sony is capable of putting the entire game into your room on multiple walls so you would be totally immersed in the game itself and would control/play it by using a Move controller. How is that not better than IllumiRoom?

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"they stated in the article that this is proof of concept only and it made no mention of when it would be ready for the consumer market so under those parameters yes it's fair to compare one experimental tech to another."

Now MS just needs to package it neatly with a cheap projector! Pretty cool:

"It's actually a Microsoft Research project that uses a Kinect for a Windows camera combined with a projector. It apparently "uses the appearance and the geometry of the room (captured by Kinect) to adapt the projected visuals in real-time without any need to custom pre-process the graphics." Sure it's still in the prototype stage, but color us intrigued. We'll be sure to follow up with the Redmond giant to see if we can get a bit more up close and personal with this. Stay tuned."

"My first thought when I saw this video was "Holy Crap!". But I think we've all been stung by concept videos in the past so gonna reserve judgement. Still, the idea has a lot of potential. "

Same thinking as me. It's all fine and dandy seeing early concepts and potential ideas but I want concrete stuff from now on. I don't want teaser trailers for games with no confirmed release date, I don't want tech demos for new ideas and new controllers with no real game, I don't want mock-up scenarios on stage that is all scripted. Just give me the truth, I think I can handle it.

Love people trying to compare a prototype to blueman group and cardboard box performance art. All I have to do pick up 4 projection TV's and mount them on my ceiling for each wall...what are those, 800 - 1200 a pop? That example is really no different than this on 4 walls:

There is no post processing, that is real time done with a Kinect and a project as captured by video:

"IllumiRoom is a proof-of-concept Microsoft Research project designed to push the boundary of living room immersive entertainment by blending our virtual and physical worlds with projected visualizations. The effects in the video are rendered in real time and are captured live -- not special effects added in post processing."

Personally I don't see this as any more of a "gimmick" than installing surround sound speakers in your living room. And this can be applied to hardcore games no problem unlike motion controls which we have yet to see a GREAT hardcore game that only uses motion controls. Hopefully next gen we'll finally see one.

I also see it(along with motion controls) as the foundation for technology of the future. This quote from another article sums up my feelings about it pretty well:

OK, for the first time, Microsoft, you've shown me a way to use kinect that I like. I do professional video projection mapping for a living, so to see it and video gaming seamlessly integrate like this is actually really cool. As others have said, however, I'll reserve judgment until I can see this thing in use. I also would like to see more innovative uses other than a limited "wider screen". My second concern would be cost vs. brightness. A good bright projector doesn't come cheap. Toss in a Kinect and an Xbox on top of that... and I can see where these rumors of having to sign up for 2 year service plans of Xbox live to afford the console come from. That doesn't even take the kinect glasses into consideration either.

I'd rather just have VR, but to it's defense it does enable more immersion without the headgear.

U have any idea's as to how this can breathe fresh air into the gaming scene? I mean: how can this product introduce new ways of playing games (other than a mere gimmick of an extended width of the tv screen's parameters)

Until we aLl start gaming in uncluttered, light colored rooms then this sort of thing is just going to add useless gimicky effects to the game.

They can't project anything useful off the screen because there is no guarantee that it will be visible. If there is a door or window or some dark furniture you won't see the image well enough to be useful.